The plant life on Alcatraz is mostly made up from non-native plants. Plants were brought to the island by people who were found themselves on the island by duty or by punishment. Today, these surviving plants represent gardening trends from years past. Mr. Freddie Reichel, one of the first gardeners for the penitentiary prison made connections with key horticulturists who recommended plants that would do well on the island. These plants, then considered rare and novel, are more common in the Bay Area now, but they are part of the living history on Alcatraz.

Blooming right now, one of these novelties is the New Zealand Christmas tree, Metrosideros excelsa. Two specimens were planted in the inmate’s gardens likely during the late-1930s on the west side of the island and are flourishing. Wisely chosen, these magnificent trees thrive in coastal conditions – tolerating wind and salt spray, and preferring well drained soil with moderate water.

Visitors from New Zealand this week were surprised to recognize the tree and asked if it was the Pohutukawa tree, referring to the tree by the native Maori name. In New Zealand, the tree blooms around Christmas time during the southern hemisphere summer. Seeing a familiar tree bloom in July instead of December in a different country is like chancing upon an old friend while on vacation.

New Zealand visitors pose with their native tree. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

The tree is highly regarded in native Maori culture for its strength and beauty. The Latin name Metrosideros comes from the Greek. Metra means

Metrosideros flowers. Photos by Shelagh Fritz

‘heartwood’ and sideron refers to its ‘iron’ strength. Excelsus is Greek for ‘highest’. What looks like bright crimson red flowers are actually clusters of stamens, the male reproductive part of the flower.

Both trees on the island are in excellent heath and have been shaped by the wind over the years. We have been successful at propagating from cuttings one of the trees and so we are working to conserve the genetic material of these historic trees.

July 16, 1951 Albert E. Smith, Alcatraz inmate 669-AZ, had a Special Progress Report prepared on his behalf for consideration of restoration of good time. Smith had been working in the gardens and on the labor crew from September 1946 until on January 24, 1950, he was involved in a fist-fight with a fellow inmate in the dining hall during breakfast time. This fist fight would forfeit him 180 days of good time off his sentence.

Mug shot of Albert E. Smith. Courtesy of NARA

The Special Progress Report filed on this day in history would restore his good time.

Smith began a troubled life at age 18 with breaking and entering, leading up to more serious charges of robbery that sentenced him to serve 24 years in Atlanta Prison in 1939. In 1945 he was transferred to Alcatraz for attempted escape. Smith was considered a serious offender – serving a lengthy sentence and being an escape risk, he was perfect for Alcatraz, a place that took the worst of the worst.

Reading through inmate files at the National Archives and Records Administration in San Bruno, it is hard not to be sympathetic to the inmates that made a few poor choices that led them to imprisonment, especially when they had experienced a tough childhood. Smith’s mother had passed away early in his upbringing and later, at age 6, Smith fell out of a window onto a cobbled street. Prior to his fall, he was considered bright but after the fall, he showed little interest in anything and was easily swayed by others.

His transfer to Alcatraz may have been a blessing in disguise. After serving two years on the garbage crew, he was assigned to the garden crew. All of Smith’s Progress Reports tell of a steady and dependable worker, performing his gardening work on the west side of the island well. Reports tell that he kept his tools in order and chased handballs that came over the recreation fence on the weekends. Although, he did had a few complaints: the limited use of water, the weather, and the food. I can certainly appreciate the first two concerns. He was seen as being very friendly and talkative, and laughed like a little boy would.

Inmates were allowed to write notes to the Warden voicing their concerns and could expect a reply back. Smith wrote several notes

Handwritten note from Smith requesting ant killer for the greenhouse.

requesting permission to use more water, as well as requesting an insecticide, Black Leaf 40, to control ants in the greenhouse. The Warden “advised Smith that water is a very scarce item on the Island, and that it is difficult for us to permit the excessive use of water in any way…”. The Warden sought advice on the use of the insecticide, a tobacco based product, as he was not keen on the idea of inmates having access to a poison.

In January 1952, Smith was transferred to Leavenworth, Kansas and he would remain there until his release in September 1962. It is not known whether Smith continued with his interest in gardening but at least during his time on Alcatraz, his attention to the plants kept him out of trouble and gave him something to nurture.

The Prisoner Gardens on the west side of the island were restored in 2009 and again offer a respite from the bleakness of the prison, and just maybe you’ll see a handball that escaped Smith.

Prisoner gardens on the west side of the island. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

The Discovery film that greets island visitors introduces the idea of Alcatraz being a layered cake of history with each era built upon the previous. Looking closely, an observant person can see where the layers meet.

The military mainly used bricks in the early construction of the island fortifications. The bricks are like ingredients in the layered cake history, each adding to the flavor of history.

The bricks themselves are rich in history and have their own stories about where they were made and how they arrived on Alcatraz. Brick companies often stamped their name in the bricks and in the gardens, nine types of named bricks have been recorded. Many of these bricks were re-used in the construction of the 1940s era garden pathways mostly found in the Officers’ Row gardens.

One of the early bricks is stamped ‘COWEN’. This firebrick was manufactured by the Joseph Cowen & Company at Blaydon Burn in northeast England between 1816 and 1900. It is a mystery how a brick from northeast England ended up in a garden pathway on Alcatraz, perhaps the brick came as ballast in a ship and was then destined for building a growing San Francisco.

An interesting brick is stamped simply ‘CH’, standing for City Hall. Bricks for city hall were manufactured by several companies in Oakland and San Francisco in the 1870s. Usually, bricks are stamped with the manufacturer’s name, not the destination of the brick. City Hall was destroyed by the earthquake and fire in 1906 and the bricks were located to Alcatraz in an effort to clear up the rubble that littered the city.

‘CARNEGIE’ bricks date between 1902 and 1911 and were made at Carnegie, in San Joaquin County, California. Many companies had their beginnings related to the gold rush and the Carnegie Brick and Pottery Company is no different. Founded in 1902, railroad workers found a seam of coal and while mining for the coal, discovered clay. With a building boom in San Francisco, building materials were in high demand and by 1910, 110 000 bricks a day were being made and were distributed all over California. The factory supported a small town but sadly, the bank that held the mortgage failed and the plant soon closed. The site is now part of the Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area.

The Livermore Fire Brick Company also has bricks on Alcatraz and the beginnings of this company illustrate the entrepreneurial characteristic of California’s early business men. In 1908 a group of businessmen proposed to develop Livermore’s first non-agricultural industry. Their plan involved the donation of 5 acres of land with the condition that all workers would live in the town, thereby boosting the local economy. An additional ten acres was purchased by the businessmen for $2650. The town then decided to use the remaining money from their Earthquake Fund to purchase the community’s share in the plant. A clause was added to the purchase of the land that the plant was to revert to town property if the plant was to be used for anything other than manufacturing. The brick plant was in operation from 1910 to 1949. A source of clay was never found locally but the company was able to ship their bricks to Sacramento, Washington State, Mexico and Honolulu. The company began experimenting in 1914 using diatomaceous earth and replaced the use of cork in lining commercial refrigerators.

LINCOLN fire bricks were made between 1890 and 1943 by the Gladding McBean & Company in Lincoln, Placer County, California. Founder Charles Gladding came to Sacramento after serving in the Civil War. He had heard about clay being found and travelled to Lincoln to take samples. The clay was found to be of excellent quality and the supply was good. He enlisted the help of his friends from Chicago and in May of 1875, the company was started. The company started to make sewer pipes and soon located an office on Market Street in San Francisco. They decorated the building with terra cotta trim and soon became known for architectural terra cotta facades. The company expanded to produce fire bricks, roof tile, chimney pipes and garden pottery. Their roof tiles were used at Stanford University and they continue to supply tiles for any current work. The company is still going strong.

Other bricks on the island are SNOWBALL, from the Derwenthaugh Fire Bricks Works in England; M.T. & CO dated from the 1860s; DFC and WEMCO from the Denver Firebrick Company. More remains to be researched about these companies and their bricks. For brick collectors (yes, there is such a thing), a great resource is Dan Mosier’s website ‘California Bricks’. Randy, a long-time garden volunteer has taken a deep interest in the bricks and is constantly on the lookout for new bricks that that we have not seen yet.

Plants never stop amazing me. With their power to harness energy from sun and give us oxygen as a by-product; they provide us food, clothing, and beauty. Yet a group of plants that only gets noticed when it is the wrong spot deserves a bit more respect. These would be the weeds of our gardens.

The past rainy winter and spring produced weeds continuously. The weeds are well adapted at growing quickly to complete their lifecycle and set seeds to start the next generation before 1) the dry summer begins and 2) before being noticed and be pulled by a gardener. As I worked my way through the gardens over the past couple of months, I was impressed by how smart some of the weeds were for being able to hide themselves in amongst similar leafed plants.

I found fireweed, Epilobium, growing amongst Fuchsia ‘Grand Harfare’ and Jupiter’s beard, Centranthus ruber. Not until the weed had outgrown its hiding place and was flowering that it called attention to itself. The fuchsia’s leaves have an almost identical vein pattern to the epilobium and the pinky hue of the fireweed accented the coral tones of the fuchsia. The fireweed was able to disguise itself with the jupiter’s beard by being a light green that matched well, again, the leaf shape was almost indistinguishable.

Epilobium with Centranthus ruber. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

Solanum americanum, American nightshade, is a very common weed on the island. It is very easy to pull when young but once established, the stems usually break off when pulled.

Solanum growing with Coreopsis 'Nana'. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

I found a young plant growing with tickseed, Coreopsis ‘Nana’. The deep green of the leaves of both plants is very much alike. Perhaps the ‘smart’ nightshade did not

realize that it was trying to camouflage itself with a dwarf cultivar and it quickly outgrew its companion.

‘How do you decide what to plant?’ is a common question that I get asked by visitors to the island. With choosing the right plant for the right place in a cultural landscape there are a few more considerations than your average backyard.

We aim to give ‘the look and the feel’ of what the gardens would have looked like during the days of the military era (1853-1933) and during the maximum security federal prison era (1934-1963). Detective work by Carola Ashford in the early days of the project built up a collection of historic photographs that we rely heavily upon. Using these photos, along with oral history interviews and historic letters, we were able to create gardens that echo the color schemes, textures and purpose of the original gardens.

Amazingly, historic photographs that we have never seen

Kathe standing in their garden. Photo by Al and Mildred Kaepple

before are still coming to light. Kathe Poteet had her early childhood years on the island in the 1950s while her father worked as the business administrator.

Kathe recently passed along a collection of photographs her parents had taken of their home on the Rock.

The photos reveal the Parade Ground, an area that has not been restored yet, to have once been a well-tended neighborhood with roses and hydrangeas at the foundations of the homes surrounded by manicured lawns. Many of the photos show Persian carpet, Drosanthemum floribundum, spilling over the seawall and the grove of Eucalyptus by the dock is still young.

The south end of the island in the 1950s. Photo by Al and Mildred Kaepple

The south end of the island today. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

Kathe is planning on attending the Alcatraz Alumni Weekend in August when past residents visit the island to share their experiences with visitors. It is through this once-a-year occasion that we have been able to compile an extensive collection of landscape photos.

I hope to meet with Kathe to find out more about the people in the photos and about her father, who obviously had a green thumb.

Al Kaepple in front of the family home. Photo by Al and Mildred Kaepple

Looking at the photos, the pride the residents took in tending their gardens is clear; it is easy to imagine calling Alcatraz home.

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Spanish discovery and exploration of the San Francisco Bay Area and its islands began in 1769. The English surveyed the Bay in 1826. Early maps of Alcatraz can be viewed on the National Park Service website.

Cartography has come a long way since the Spanish and English mapped Alcatraz in the mid 1700s. This week, Robert Warden, the Director of the Center for Heritage Conservation (CHC) and Professor of Architecture at Texas A&M University has been on the island with his associates Dr. Julie Rogers, Associate Director for the CHC and Lonnie Champagne along with Director Dr. Tanya Komas and her students from the Concrete Industry Management Program at Chico State University, to demonstrate the uses of laser scanning.

Students laser scanning Officers' Row. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

Laser scanning or Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) is a method of producing millions of points in 3D space that represent the size and shape of objects as large as landscapes and as small as nails. The product is called a point cloud, which can look like a 3D photograph if there are enough points. It produces points by bouncing a laser beam off of objects – like buildings – and calculating the angle and distance of the object from the scanner. It works very much like a typical survey total station in concept with the exception that scanners can calculate tens to hundreds of thousands of point locations per second rather than the single point from a total station. Multiple scans are carefully pieced together to form a complete 3D point cloud of the object. Scanners, like cameras have differing technical specifications that make them useful for different purposes. The challenge of recording historic buildings and sites like Alcatraz is the necessity for accuracy at large and small scales. Typical accuracy for the Riegl 390 used for this session is 6mm.

As I was speaking with Robert, his students were scanning the Warden’s House and within 30 minutes, an image was produced that could show me the individual bricks in the fireplace, looking down into the building.

Robert explaining the laser scanning. Photo by Tanya Kamos

Laser Scanning has been in use since the 1970s but only in the last fifteen years has the development of laser digital technology allowed it to be adapted for preservation and engineering purposes.

On Alcatraz, this technology will be useful for documenting the historic site accurately. Mapping the gardens in the early days of the Historic Gardens of Alcatraz Project was difficult with the overgrowth entanglements that obscured the fine details in the landscape.

With laser scanning, details such as gradient changes, precise distances and documenting the current state of the historic features can be done. Laser scanning is quick and accurate. In additional to documenting the landscape, the information gathered from laser scanning can produce accurate interpretive models and be useful for maintenance of the aging structures.

Summer is slowly showing itself on the island and the change of seasons can be seen in the blooming gardens.

A section of the main road, as visitors walk from the dock to the cell house is affectionately called the ‘fern wall’, even though in summer there is no evidence of ferns anywhere. The granite blocks that form this retaining wall was built in the early military days and was softened by moss and ferns that came to the island likely as spores in the imported soil.

The fern wall in 1924. San Francisco library photo

As the winter rains cease, the native fern, Polypodium californicum turns a golden brown and then go dormant. The fern wall undergoes a dramatic change from lush green to vivid pinks as the Jupiter’s beard, Centranthus ruber, bursts into the season. At the base of the wall is a collection of Pelargonium that are survivors from the prison days – ‘Brilliant’, ‘Mrs. Langtry’ and P. quercifolium that add to the hue of pinks.

Fern wall in the spring. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

Fern wall in the summer. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

To be accurate with historic photos of this wall, last year, we planted plugs of Persian carpet, Drosanthemum floribundum in the cracks of the granite blocks that will eventually cascade down the wall. With living walls being the current trend in gardening, this wall on Alcatraz was way ahead of its time.

The wall in the 1940s. Photo by Joseph Simpson

When the fog rolls in, the intent of the original gardeners to create cheerfulness on a barren island must have been no easy undertaking. I also cannot help but wonder if the inmate gardeners marked the passage of time with the changing blossoms.

On the west side of the island, tucked under the New Zealand Christmas tree, Metrosideros excelsa, is the historic tool shed, originally built by inmates in the 1950s. The tool shed has a million dollar view towards the Golden Gate Bridge and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Without a doubt, this view was a constant reminder of a world beyond the reach of the inmates that worked in these gardens.

View of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

The toolshed in 2009. Photo by Robin Abad

The tool shed, like the gardens, was abandoned in 1963, and could not escape the weathering effects of Pacific storms and the relentless summer winds and salt air. The tool shed was repaired by the National Park Service in the late 1970s and again by garden volunteers in the spring of 2010 with help from the National Park Service maintenance team. The tool shed was in a bad state of repair with the roof falling in and most of the wood structure rotting away. The cement block base walls were still in fair condition and only needed minor patches. Just like the inmates had used scrap lumber on the island in the original construction, we scouted re-use stores to find a door, suitable windows, and flashing for the roof. This past month, garden volunteers applied primer and a fresh coat of ‘Presidio White’ paint to finish up the restoration.

Garden volunteers applying the final coat of paint. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

Pink iceplant, Drosanthemum floribundum or Persian carpet, has been very prominent this past week from Crissy Field, Fisherman’s Wharf and on a clear morning, even from Doyle Drive coming into the city.

The planting of the tiny succulent was part of a beautification effort undertaken by the military in 1924 after being pressured by the vocal citizens of San Francisco to landscape the barren the island. Inmates took part in the planting and soon, carpets of pink cascaded down the steep hillsides, not only stabilizing the soil but providing a cheerful look desired by San Francisco. It is somewhat ironic that a gentle soft pink was chosen to mask the harsh prison.

Historic view of the Persian Carpet from the parade ground. Photo by C. Stucker

Neglected cellhouse slope in 2007. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

With 40 years of neglect, the iceplant on the cellhouse slope suffered and was soon choked out with oxalis, wild radish and grasses. In 2007, this historic garden area was restored.

The slope was stabilized with jute netting and cuttings of Drosanthemum from elsewhere on the island were established on the slope. Coaxing the drosanthemum to take root and to keep the slope free of oxalis has been no easy task. Staff and volunteers have invested countless hours into weeding over the past four years, but seeing our efforts from across the water, well over a mile, is quite awarding.

The slope this week. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

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Bearded iris has been a long-time garden favorite that even found their way onto the most notorious prison island. There are five cultivars of bearded iris that are survivors from the prison days, blooming every May without fail. One survivor, Iris ‘King’s Ransom’ blooms twice a year, early spring and again in the fall. The other four cultivars are still unidentified, and we are working at finding out more about them.

Survivor bearded iris in Officers' Row. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

My favorite iris is in bloom right now in Officers’ Row. This clump of iris was entirely covered by ivy and blackberries until 2003, when they were cleared and began to flower again. The 3’ flower stalks are heavy with lavender blooms that catch visitors by surprise with their bubble gum fragrance. Another survivor iris smells like root beer, clearly not your average modern iris.

Up close. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

The only thing better than five cultivars of bearded iris is more bearded iris! The Garden Conservancy’s first preservation project, the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek is a garden haven for heirloom bearded iris. Ruth Bancroft’s collection matches the time frame of the penitentiary gardens, and so Alcatraz has received divisions of her iris for the past four years. We now have just over 30 cultivars of heirloom iris in a wide range of vibrant colors and rich scents. The iris are not troubled by the dry summers, winter rains or the salt breezes and fog. Occasionally, there will be aphids on the leaves but these are easily washed away.

Ruth Bancroft Garden iris. Photo by Shelagh Fritz

The iris will be in bloom for only another two weeks, so now is the time to walk your nose around the island finding these heirloom garden beauties.